Too Weird for Swans

What’s this? The first site upgrade in two years, and it’s not even a new release: just a point update!

Back in 2011, we started this site. Before then, we were just a bunch of kids with a camera and a YouTube account. Then we became a bunch of kids with a camera, a YouTube account and a .wordpress.com suffix!

With this site upgrade, we’ve finally got our own domain and a new host. This means we now have a lot more control over the site, and can start to bring you a better experience. So far you won’t notice a lot of difference, but more visible changes will be introduced gradually as and when we’re ready.

We’re keeping copies of our previous posts here for now, but everything’s been moved over to the new site and all new updates will be made there. Because they’re new, and it’s new, and do you see how it all works?

An Englishman’s cupcake is his castle. Or something. Don’t look at me like that, it’s late and I’m tired.

Hello folks it’s me folks!

The shoot for Be My Guest was almost exactly the opposite of the previous one: while Without a Sound took a couple of hours – since the sound wasn’t important and we didn’t have to do many retakes – and ended up including almost all the footage we shot, this two-minute video took a good seven hours to film. I never realised it would be such a short sketch until we started filming, when I had to stop and think about just how much of each shot was going to make it into the finished product. In the end I had to make it even shorter by cutting one joke and a longer and funnier, but less technically sound, rant from Vikkie.

It was absolutely worth all the effort, though. I had SO MUCH FUNNNNNNNNN with this!

So you may have noticed we’ve been having some microphone problems recently…

HELLO! Hello, hello, hello. We are back after a short, mostly unplanned hiatus. For those of you who missed our explanatory Facebook posts, Alex’s laptop can no longer edit videos and my internet connection started playing up just as we were approaching our 23rd July deadline. Since Alex is away in Edinburgh for the entire Festival and I’m up there all of next week, we decided to take a break and get back up to speed with the next couple of videos.

…And then I finished the latest video two days late for entirely stupid reasons. Sorry about that. Not to worry, though; if I’m having difficulty getting the next video done in time I shall just hit myself repeatedly in the face with a table tennis bat and upload that instead.

More importantly, this video marks the writing debut of some bloke who once stood up a ladder. Leon’s a friend from my university days who’s similarly interested in writing and producing comedy but is much, much better at it than I am. Seriously. He wrote this sketch after work across just two evenings, and not only produced a coherent script* requiring exactly the three actors who were available for filming, but also managed to perfectly nail the style of classic WHY sketches like The League of TWFAP, Oh, I See! or The Final Cut. As soon as I read it, all I could think was how much it sounded like us.

So, yeah. Good job, Leon. I think you’re hired.

-M

*Weird, I grant you, but still coherent. It escalates nicely from start to finish.

So, this video was delayed, and then it was delayed, and then it was delayed, and then it was delayed. But now it’s out! So that’s kinda cool. Vikkie Come Home was supposed to be last autumn’s “Hey folks, Vikkie’s left town and won’t be around as much for a while” video. It was fun to deliver the announcement through a direct sequel to our first video and in theory separating out the shots needed for Vikkie and for Rest of World would make it easier to film, but it just proved impossible to get all the different bits done until recently. And then it took forever to join them all up without too many cracks.

Adobe Creative Suite is a weird thing. It seems you can either do a really efficient job of greenscreening but end up with pixellated edges (as seen at the end of the sketch in the intentionally not-so-convincing shot) or you can have smoother edges at the cost of turning anything too pale slightly transparent as well, regardless of colour (as seen in the earlier shots). What’s the deal with that, eh?

This video came out of brainstorming possible movies for the next Dear God Why. I started thinking about what my favourite horror movie actually is (it’s The Thing), and challenged myself to write the most complicated monologue I could about the film, while still remaining internally consistent.

In recent times (or, in one case, back in October) there have been appearances by all manner of Sarahs and Alistairs in our videos, so it seems appropriate to clear up which ones are which. And, perhaps more crucially, which ones aren’t.

The Sarah in Dear God, WHY: Creep Van is Alex’s girlfriend Sarah Spradlin, who came all the way from Illinois to watch a film featuring a misty, romanticised flashback to an advert for off-brand Viagra. And then watch it all over again for the video. Pity her.

The Alistair who gave such a wonderfully eeeeeeevill performance at the end of The Other Side is Alistair Aitcheson, game dev and gentleman. Alistair specialises in multiplayer games playable on a single tablet in which you certainly aren’t encouraged to mess with your opponent’s side of the board, nudge nudge, wink wink and will be giving a talk on the subject at GDC Europe this year.

Finally, the Alistair from On Board, Broad Band, Narrow Mind and the very end of Brain Storm is Alistair Wright, one of our regular tabletop RPG/board gaming group. I haven’t actually seen him since his birthday, when I left him on a boat surrounded by alcohol,* but I’m sure he’s fine. Just fine.

For the sake of convenience, Mr Aitcheson is known as Ali, while Mr Wright goes by the soubriquet of Nerd. Sarahs are usually identified by context.

-M

*That is to say, he was sitting in a boat and his seat was surrounded by glasses containing a variety of alcoholic beverages. The boat wasn’t floating in alcohol. Just thought I’d make that clear.